Venice and the Rhino a Symposium Saturday, 24 November 2018
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Beauty and the Beast: Venice and the Rhino A Symposium Saturday, 24 November 2018 PROGRAM A world without rhinos and a world without Venice is unimaginable. And yet both Venice and the Rhinoceros have become victims of their desirability and objectification as luxury objects – both consumed without discrimination by an ever- expanding consumer class. This shimmering city and magnificent beast might seem an unlikely pairing. However, not only are both threatened with extinction in the face of unfettered consumption, but the rhinoceros is embedded emblematically in the city: Marco Polo provided one of the earliest descriptions of the Sumatran rhinoceros; a rhino is portrayed in an ancient mosaic in the heart of the city’s basilica; and a visiting rhinoceros to the city is commemorated in a famous eighteenth-century painting by one of Venice’s great artists. The symposium brings together an international group of artists, conservationists, poets, writers, and historians, who together will explore the often surprising intersections between these two endangered objects of mass luxury consumption. The recent and artificial construction of rhino horn as a unique object of desire will be placed within its longer history; the tale of Clara the rhino in Venice will be elucidated; the artists contributing to the exhibition will be introduced; and the complex threads involved in the mass tourism market of Venice with its destructive consequences on one of the world’s most beautiful of cities will be unraveled. Catherine Kovesi Organiser and Curator emporium.org.au This free and public symposium, which contextualises and launches the accompanying exhibition ‘Rhinoceros: Luxury’s Fragile Frontier’, examines the paradoxical magnificence and fragility of both Venice and of the Rhinoceros. SYMPOSIUM 24 November, 2018 Palazzo Contarini Polignac EXHIBITION 24 November - 21 December, 2018 Magazzino Gallery, Palazzo Contarini Polignac Registration is required to attend the symposium Symposium Program and place numbers are limited. Register via Eventbrite: eventbrite.com.au > beauty-and-the- beast-venice-and-the-rhino-a-symposium 09.30 Registration and Coffee Bikem de Montebello Welcome to the Palazzo Contarini Polignac 10.15 Managing Director, Palazzo Contarini Polignac Ronna Bloom The Night the Rhinos Came: Poems of Fragility I 10.30 Poet in Residence, Sinai Health Toronto Catherine Kovesi Introduction. Luxury’s fragile frontiers + how a symposium 10.45 University of Melbourne came about… Jane Da Mosto Venice: A Fragile and Resilient City 11.15 Executive Director, We are here Venice 11.45 Coffee Break Lynn Johnson Reinventing Magnificence: status from contribution 12.15 Founding Director, Nature Needs More 12:45 Lunch Break Ronna Bloom The Night the Rhinos Came: Poems of Fragility II 13.45 Poet in Residence, Sinai Health Toronto Glynis Ridley Keynote. One of a Kind: Clara the Rhinoceros in eighteenth- 13.50 University of Louisville century Venice and the tale of a missing horn Sophie Bostock Clara in Qatar: The story of a Meissen porcelain 14.45 Orientalist Museum, Qatar Bruno Martinho Rhino horns and scraps of unicorn: The sense of touch 15.00 European University Institute and the consumption of rhino horns in early modern Iberia 15.30 Coffee Break Catherine Kovesi Gigi Bon: Her Oeuvre, her Wünderkammer, and how Venice 16.00 (with Gigi Bon) became a Rhino Sabrina Ardizzoni Shih Li-Jen: His Oeuvre, and his vision of the rhino and 16.30 University of Bologna unfettered consumption Ronna Bloom The Night the Rhinos Came: Poems of Fragility III 17.00 Poet in Residence, Sinai Health Toronto 17.30 Drinks and a Vernissage Rhinoceros: Luxury’s Fragile Frontier Welcome to the Palazzo 10.15 Contarini Polignac. Winnaretta – Edmond and Love for Venice Bikem de Montebello Biography Managing Director Bikem de Montebello has degrees in Political Science from Palazzo Contarini Polignac Bosphorus University, and in Fashion from Parsons School of Design in Paris. She completed her Masters in International The American-born Winnaretta Singer (1865-1943), Relations at Johns Hopkins University SAIS Bologna Center, daughter of Isaac Singer (inventor of the mass-produced and has a MSc in Luxury Management from Sup de Luxe, sewing machine), married Prince Edmond de Polignac, a Paris. She worked for many years marketing cosmetics, in composer of music, in 1893. In 1900 Winnaretta bought the international brand management and product development fifteenth-century Palazzo Contarini, on the Grand Canal, as a for brands/companies such as Nivea, La Prairie, Lancôme birthday gift for Edmond and hence the Palazzo’s combined and Biotherm in Paris, Zurich, and Hamburg. She has taught name - Contarini Polignac. Living between Venice and the history of fashion at Esmod fashion school and Bilgi Paris, Winnaretta was a well-known patron of the arts, University, Istanbul. Currently she is managing a fifteenth- sciences, and letters, first together with her husband, and, century palazzo, Palazzo Contarini Polignac, in Venice. after his death in 1901, continued to use her fortune to benefit these fields. In her welcome address, Bikem will briefly outline Winnaretta’s extraordinary contributions to the cultural life of the city of Venice and the ways in which this palace was to become an indispensable and very active outpost of her salon in Paris, a celebration of her love for Edmond and their mutual love for Venice – the fragile city. For more www.palazzocontarinipolignac.com/ Introductory: Luxury’s 10.45 fragile frontiers + how a symposium came about Catherine Kovesi Biography Organiser and Curator Catherine Kovesi is an historian of early modern Italian University of Melbourne History at the University of Melbourne, with an especial research focus on debates surrounding luxury consumption This symposium and accompanying exhibition were born in the early modern world. In 2013-15 she was an from a series of wondrous encounters in the city of Venice international partner in the Leverhulme Trust-funded and beyond with three remarkable people: the Venetian research network: ‘Luxury and the Manipulation of Desire: artist Gigi Bon, the Taiwanese artist Shih Li-Jen, and the Historical Perspectives for Contemporary Debates’. Her British-born Australian-based wildlife conservationist Lynn forthcoming edited book Luxury and the Ethics of Greed in Johnson. In this paper I outline these encounters and the Early Modern Italy (Brepols, 2018) derives from this research ways in which all three protagonists through their divergent collaboration. She has published widely on sumptuary law, on work interrogate a burning issue of our day, namely the luxury consumption in Italy more broadly, and on the social, impact of unregulated desire and consumption on two of political and religious life of Florence and Venice in particular. our most ancient and seemingly enduring world treasures: She is currently working on the spending habits, and artistic the 1500-year-old city of Venice and the 50 million-year- and religious patronage networks of the seventeenth- old rhinoceros. Both this beautiful city, and this mighty beast century Venetian Doge Leonardo Donà dalle Rose. She has share an unexpected dilemma of fragility in the modern age been bringing students from the University of Melbourne to of consumption, and both are facing grave threats to their Venice since 2007. longevity. Luxury has a long and not entirely reputable past, and this paper also outlines this longer history of luxury, and that of its more distinguished counterpart - magnificence. These two concepts in the longue durée provide the context for the rich and varied papers and interventions for the day. For more https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu. au/display/person4916 10.30 The Night the Rhinos 13.45 Came: Poems of Fragility, 17.0 0 I + II + III Ronna Bloom Biography Poet in Residence, Sinai Ronna Bloom is the author of six books of poetry. Her most Health; Poet in Community, recent book, The More (Pedlar Press, 2017) was longlisted for the 2018 City of Toronto Book Award. Ronna’s poems University of Toronto have been recorded by the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, translated into Spanish and Bengali, and have been For this project in Venice, Ronna will write and present used in the work of filmmakers, doctors, academics, spiritual poems that reflect on fragility, loss, and the possibilities leaders, and architects. of contact, empathy, and salvage through presence. Ronna is currently Poet in Community at the University of Toronto and Poet in Residence in the Sinai Health System. In these roles, she offers health care professionals, students, patients, and visitors opportunities to articulate their experiences through writing and poetry. Her Spontaneous Poetry Booths and Prescriptions for Poetry have appeared in hospital waiting rooms, bookstores, fundraisers and arts events in Canada and abroad. Since Ronna’s first visit in 2015, she has returned to Venice four times, feeling an urgency to understand and connect to the place through writing and presence. For more https://ronnabloom.com Venice: A Fragile 11.15 and Resilient City Jane da Mosto Biography Executive Director, we are Jane da Mosto trained as an environmental scientist here Venice (MA, Oxford University, M. Phil. Imperial College London) and gained international experience as a consultant on Venice is a paradoxical city built right in the middle of sustainable development. After working in London in a dynamic and unstable coastal lagoon system yet it management consultancy